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It's a shame it took this long for you guys to review the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, which is a staple of the cheap-but-effective heatsink setups for overclockers. Glad to see it performed rather well. =) Reply

I just built a new PC with 2 front intake fans, one rear exhaust fan, and the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro. My E4500 hits 40c at idle, 59c at load, and 63c with a 600 Mhz overclock. Not sure if my CPU reports the temp high (I've heard of this), I got a dud with the Freezer 7, or I applied my thermal paste wrong, but it sucks seeing other people get these kinds of results. I'm almost tempted to see what I would get with the stock fan but that would be a lot of trouble. Reply

is closed by dust.
the alpine 7 resist and keep working long after many other stop dissapating heat.
i will be glad that when you benching somthing you will chek it for the long run. as im living in israel (dusty) i have lot of experience. oren Reply

I had a Freezer 64 Pro on an Opteron Dual Core about 2 years ago. It was pretty good and cheap, but the fan gets loud when it's at full speed. When I got my Core 2 Duo, I switched to Scythe Ninja Plus because it cools a lot better while being basically silent and only a bit more expensive.

I'm all about effective + quiet these days and I wouldn't go back to that Freezer unless it was a CPU that didn't need much cooling power. Reply

I've had a Freezer-7 on a Core 2 Duo 3.0 Ghz E6850. I bought it based on good feedback at NewEgg in November. I wanted a cooler that was quiet, better at cooling than stock, and one that could extend the life of my CPU. I'm glad to say that the Freezer-7 has met all my expectations. It's been rock solid and something which I could easily recommend. Reply

What did you use to control the speed of the fan during the tests? Asus' QFan? Speedfan?

Would you know what the speed was during idle and under load? The reason I ask is because I have an AC Freezer 7 Pro and although it is somewhat quiet, I definitely wouldn't call it "near silent" like you did in the article. Reply

gotta give credit to arctic cooling. Their vga coolers are top notch: reasonably priced (compared to the $50 option from Thermalright and zalman) and virtually silent. seems they replicated this for their cpu coolers. hope to see more products from these guys in the future. Reply

Is there any reason you don't include with the new testbed/database your custom water cooling setup that you've been using to chart the X38/X48?

I realize it may be extreme but it feels missing if only to show what that "next" level of cooling means in relation to the "top rated performers". I guess I'd also be remiss in not asking for at least one of the new Peltier/Water compact combo coolers in the mix just for those reference lines on the graphs.

If you only want to limit results to "available/ready to buy" I understand.

I'm still looking at all options for my next "technology-leap" (AMD 4000+ 939) system build and being able to see if investing in the extreme is worth the results would help with some of the choices.

These aren't really longer-life bearings. Anyone can make a bearing and claim that in an ideal environment it will have really long life. That's shady marketing, the finished fan, as implemented, is not that ideal environment for several reasons such as thrust level, imbalance, ambient temp. Frankly I find the bearing on my Freezer 64 Pro to be below average compared to my major (fan manufacturer not PC parts relabeler) brands. I would rate them as well if not better than many of the crude fans one would find on cheap heatsinks at least, and the fan imbalance being offset by the rubber mounts does help.

As for the elastomeric fan mounts, no this is not expensive engineering. Maybe a penny a piece, no more expensive than screws to hold a fan on. Perhaps we could say the unique fan frame design cost a slight bit extra though when in volume the cost may be less than you'd think, particularly if not manufactured by a major label. Upon examination of the fan bearing anyone with a trained eye can easily see these are not premium sleeve bearings by any stretch, and they are a lot short on lubricant, you should expect them not to be so quiet within the life of the system. Relube the bearing periodically for best results.

While my comments seem (are) negative, overall these coolers are a great value, but we do need to be objective in recognizing the cons as well as the pros. I'm not aware of better value for the money so they are still 'sinks to seriously consider except for attempts at extreme overclocking. Reply

The Engineering is expensive - not necessarily the parts. What we were trying to say here is that these kinds of solutions are usually reserved for higher-priced coolers, and not often seen on coolers selling for such a low price.

As for bearing life, most coolers in this price range don't even rate fan bearing life. The expected "life" of the fan on the under $15 Alpine 7 is 400,000 hours and the bearing is a Fluid Dynamic Bearing - like the Scythe Sflex 120mm fan which is $20 for the fan alone. These are both impressive specs for any cooler fan - especially one that sells with the complete cooler for less than $15. Reply

You have no evidence of that. A higher ambient temp, worse case ventilation, and/or higher vcore can cause this.

However, some mountings don't seem to put as much pressure on the 'sink, it can be mounted as "properly" as possible and still this (and especially along with a combination of aforementioned factors) could result in that temp.

The real question is WHY someone would have allowed their CPU to get this hot instead of reducing the o'c or taking whatever other measures are necessary. Reply

The "photo gallery" from CES (Jan. 2008) included a photo of Arctic Cooling's "Freezer Xtreme". Any idea when that CPU cooler will be available?
I have a screen capture of the photo, but can't locate it on Anandtech.com for posting the link.
It's an "8-pipe cooler that only weighs 600 grams". Reply

I've been using the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro for about half a year now. It's mostly quiet and cool, even with my Pentium D 830. Recently, the dust collecting in my Cooler Master Centurion 5 case has caused the CPU to overheat under 100% load(and that powered off the PC). Anyhow, I 'd definitely recommend it to anyone using a stock Intel HSF, especially for the extremely hot Pentium D's.

I'm glad that AnandTech finally reviewed it. Why didn't you highlight the fact that the Freezer 7 Pro beats every other coolers tested so far at AnandTech at stock speed(at both idle and load, in both aspects of temp. and noise)? Reply

My Q6600 at 3.0GHz stays under 60C on all cores at full load per Coretemp, in total silence with fan rpm barely breaking 1,000 rpm. There is simply no need for a cooler any better for this level of CPU performance.

My QX6700 is a different story - there the Freezer 7 Pro kept the cores at a within-spec 70C but with the fan at 2,600 rpm and with associated noise. I replaced that with a Thermalright 120 Extreme, and that CPU now runs at 3.0Ghz with core temps under 60C. At least a 10 degree drop compared to the Freezer 7 Pro.

So, Freezer 7 Pro does have it's limitations, but for all but extreme overclocking, or the B3 core quads, it is all 99% of people will ever need.

I have a Freezer Pro over top of a E6750 at 3.3ghz. Runs very cool and quiet. I also have the alero on the vid card and use Artic fans to cool the case. Overall a very quiet system. The only noise I get is from the Earthwatts 380 power supply which is comparativly quiet to other PS's.

Interestingly, I used the Artic Freezer on my other system with a Q6600 Quad Core running at 3.4 prior to replacing it with a Tuniq Tower! I really spent the extra $ for the tuniq for nothing! Although the temps were down by about 3C across the board, it didn't allow for any higher overclock! Plus I pick up more noise to get those lower temps!

My first experience with Artic came with the imported coolers for the original Slot A K7 CPUs and I have always been impressed with their engineering and quality. The keep a very high standard and I doubt I will venture far from them in the future as long as that continues! Reply

We also tested and reported overclocking on page 8, and the coolers are fine for moderate overclocking. It is just that neither cooler comes close to the top overclockers we have tested. The Alpine 7 dissipates 90W, and the Freezer 7 Pro dissipates around 130W. The top Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme performance shows it is dissipating around 165W. Most of the top air coolers we have tested dissipate 150W or more. Reply

This is a pretty old product to be reviewing... I've had my Freezer 7 for well over a year, and I'm sure it had been around a bit before that.

That said, it is by far the best bang for the buck HSF you can get. Those giant towers may cool better, but they're huge and are hard to get in even some fairly large cases, and are much more expensive. Reply

I was looking into the Freezer 64 Pro for an AM2/AM2+ build and was wondering if anyone knew if the performance for the AMD version performed similarly. I noticed the specs seem to be slightly different as the 64 Pro fan maxes out at only 2200 rpm pushing 40 cfm where the 7 Pro maxes out at 2500 rpm pushing 45 cfm. They appear to be of the same design varied only by the mounting hardware. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Reply

I have a Freezer 64 Pro. It dropped the temps on my CPU by 10C instantly from a Zalman 7000. It now runs 20C cooler after the Thermal compound cured. It is definitely a nice heatsink, although it is difficult to attach unless you remove the MB from the case. Reply

The design is exactly the same, only the fan circuits differ to reduce the max fan rpm, this because AMD has put out low-watt CPU's for a couple of years now , when the Intel version should still be able to cope with Pentium 5/D's and so on...

The lower maximum RPM will help with the fans longevity, but actually in my C2D system it has never went up to full speed anyway... Reply

The motherboard and BIOS change among other things so the fan speeds may not ramp up as soon but when they ramp up they might do so to a larger amount. Look at the Intel stock cooler which drops from 56C to 50C with the new testbed. They covered a lot of the changes here:

If you look at the results you'll see that TAT and CoreTemp both register higher than the old EVGA board by several C. Meanwhile the Ultra 120 X goes from 36C to 42C idle and 47C to 59C load. Obviously there are lots of variables. I'm not sure what margin of error is with CoreTemp and such either but it may be several C.

The important thing IMO is to look at noise levels and max OC along with temps. Nothing exists in a vaccuum so don't focus on one metric. Reply

I'm so glad to see an affordable yet quality cooling solution. I was tired of seeing products like TT BT for the same price as it was when the cooler came out 2+ years ago. Same for Zalman HSFs. Now compete with this, you price gougers :) Reply

They are actually the same heatsink as far as I've been told (kingwin may have a poorer quality fan but I'm not sure). Both are on par with the Ultra-120 if the frostytech review is to be believed and include a fan for a much lower price. Maybe these should be the next coolers up for review?

Yeah bought the freezer pro for my 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo, with a chassis fan it turns out 22 degrees celsius! Amazing, this with half the stock fan speed, beeing practicly silent. And here in sweden we get theese for $20!

After i bought the CPU fan, i actually swaped my system for the entire experience :D. Using their silentium case and with the inredible AND cheap Accelero S1 GPU cooler! Beeing cool has never been easier or cheaper haha...

Anandtech should test their Accelero S1 cooler with and without a fan, here in sweden it also sells for $20.
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